Obj. ID: 50211
Memorials Monument on the Mass Grave in Balvi, Latvia, 1950s
Memorial Name
No official name
Who is Commemorated?
The Balvi Jews murdered on this site.
Description:
The monument is placed at the entrance to the mass grave, which is surrounded by a wooden fence with concrete posts. It is a low brick structure with a semicircular top covered by tin. A granite plaque is affixed at the front side of the structure. It bears the Star of David and an inscription in Russian.
Inscription
Russian
Вечная память погибшему
еврейскому населению
гор. Балви расстреленному [расстрелянному]
немецкими оккупантами
9 августа 1941 года
Родственники
Translation: Eternal memory to the perished Jewish population of the town of Balvi, shot down by German occupiers on August 9, 1941. Relatives.
Commissioned by
Relatives of the Balvi Jews.
8 image(s)
sub-set tree:
Plaque: height 73 cm, width 59 cm
After the German troops entered Balvi in the beginning of July 1941, all Jews of the town were concentrated in the block around the synagogue. On August 9, 1941, they all, about 300 people, were taken to the Celminieki Forest (approximately 5 km from Balvi) and shot there by the Latvian “Arājs’ Commando,” together with the local “self–defenders.” 20 Jews from Vīksna parish (11 km from Balvi) were shot together with the Balvi Jews.
After WWII, relatives of the murdered Jews established a monument on the mass grave. Its inscription is almost identical to the inscription on the monument erected in 1959 in the Krustpils Jewish cemetery (see here) and this allows us to date the monument in Balvi to the 1950s.
"Holocaust Memorial Places in Latvia," a website by the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Latvia, http://memorialplaces.lu.lv/memorial-places/latgale/balvi-municipality-celmene/.
Meler, Meyer, Jewish Latvia: Sites to Remember (Tel-Aviv: Association of Latvian and Estonian Jews in Israel, 2013), pp. 52-54.
Meler, Meyer, Mesta nashei pamiati: Evreiskie obshchiny Latvii, unichtozhennye v Kholokoste (Riga: by the author, 2010), pp. 46-48.